New hole in the atmosphere discovered

Ok. Please show how nuclear testing 55 years ago can cause of dearth of ozone today.

1. Water vapor. Atmospheric nuclear tests got it into the stratosphere and there it stays. The following link describes the chemistry and physics
between the stratosphere and the mesosphere that keeps redistributing, re-suspending and recreating water vapor.

When a nuclear charge explodes at the Earth’s surface or in the atmosphere, the shock wave vents water vapor from the troposphere to the
stratosphere through tropopause. For some period (˜ 3 years) water vapor in the stratosphere and aerosol, and dust in the troposphere and
stratosphere suffice for the defense of the Earth from solar radiation.

Almost the whole of the stratosphere and mesosphere consists of molecular oxygen O2 and molecular nitrogen N2. Also ozone O3 is formed in
comparatively small quantities with the help of solar radiation. The first distinction is the temperature gradient: temperature grows with altitude
in the stratosphere approximately from -55 degrees to O degrees and diminishes in the mesosphere, from about O degrees to -95 degrees (see Fig. 2).
The second distinction consists in the different pressure and density, which are several times less in the mesosphere than in the
stratosphere.

Therefore, water vapour in the troposphere (such as is formed during atmospheric nuclear tests), comes to a temperature below freezing point
almost everywhere except its upper border. Thus it forms crystals having greater density than the ambient gas.

But water vapour in the mesosphere is another matter. At a pressure hundreds of times less than at atmospheric pressure at sea level, the freezing
point of water vapour shifts to a vastly negative temperature without the intermediate liquid state (see Fig. 3). Therefore there exists a sizable
layer spanning the higher part of the stratosphere and lower part of the mesosphere where water is in the gas state.

Therefore it has some tendency to move up in rapidly moving flows with some stirring against the background of diffusion. When it migrates, gas
climbs to a temperature below freezing point, crystallizes and migrates down. There it evaporates missing the liquid state, and the process repeats.
Thus, mesopause with a strongly negative temperature of around -95 degrees prevents water vapor leaving beyond the upper bound of the
mesosphere.

And from the initial explosion - heat and shock - recovery is not guaranteed.

Gamma-rays are the most energetic form of light and are produced by the hottest regions of the universe. They are also produced by such violent
events as supernova explosions or the destruction of atoms, and by less dramatic events, such as the decay of radioactive material in space.

A Gamma-ray burst could wipe out all living species on the planet Earth at any time with no warning and destroy the ozone layer in the process.
There is no protection for the planet from this fate.

The process of the gamma rays knocking electrons out of the atoms in the mid-stratosphere causes this region of the atmosphere to become an
electrical conductor due to ionization, a process which blocks the production of further electromagnetic signals and causes the field strength to
saturate at about 50,000 volts per metre.

And radiation from these tests just goes on and on in the stratosphere...

Concentrations of radioactive particles injected into the high layer of the atmosphere by activities like nuclear testing are larger than
expected. This discovery is reported in a paper published in Nature Communications this week. The work also provides evidence that volcanic eruptions
can redistribute the particles from higher to lower atmospheric layers, bringing them closer to Earth.

But it was all for a good cause - improving communication - the military buzz word i.e that's what HAARP is for as well.

Scientific American corresponded with science historian James Fleming of Colby College in Maine, author of Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History
of Weather and Climate Control

Geo-scale engineering projects were conducted by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union between 1958 and 1962 that had nothing to do with countering
or ameliorating climate change. Starting with the [U.S.'s] 1958 Argus A-bomb explosions in space and ending with the 1962 Starfish Prime H-bomb test,
the militaries of both nations sought to modify the global environment for military purposes.

And then there's smoke. But back then there really wasn't any fuel in the sky so I guess I don't need to cover that.

a reply to: luxordelphi
Probably not worth mentioning but I'll do it anyway.

There are roughly 2000 thunderstorms in progress around the world at any one time producing about 30 to 100 cloud to ground flashes each second or
about five million flashes a day. But thunderstorms produce much more than just lightning bolts. Heat from lightning flashes produces 100 million
tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer every year. Five times hotter than the sun, every 10,000,000 volts of a lightning bolt creates new molecules, such as
NOx - which is then deposited into the stratosphere where it can affect other compounds such as ozone. Thunderheads also deliver vast quantities of
water vapour into the stratosphere - the greatest 'green-house gas' on earth.

Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in
global surface temperature over 2000–2009 by about 25% compared to that which would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases.

How could that happen? Didn't planes fly from 2000-2009? I guess removing aviation from the Earth would still help a little bit though. At least
until you factor in the polluting effects of its replacements.

Ozone, in turn, forms in the lower atmosphere only if there are sufficient nitrogen oxides there. Large amounts of nitrogen oxide compounds are
produced in particular by intensive lightning over land. However, the air masses in the tropical West Pacific were not exposed to any continental
tropical storms for a very long time during their transport across the giant ocean. And the lightning activity in storms over the ocean is relatively
small. At the same time the lifetime of atmospheric ozone is short due to the exceptionally warm and moist conditions in the tropical West
Pacific.

This article is saying that air parcels cross the Pacific on their way west without contact with land/forests/etc. OH would normally form from ozone
in a situation like this BUT there is no ozone here. No ozone because ozone forms with nitrogen oxides and there are no nitrogen oxides because there
are no tropical storms and there is no lightning. Also, the ocean here is warmer than anywhere else so ozone lifetimes are consequently short. Warm
air rises (vertical mixing) and is ozone and OH free. Hence, the hole.

So, do air parcels cross the Pacific on their way west? Trade wind anomalies say no.

Westerly wind anomalies are present over the western tropical Pacific while trade winds are near-average along the equator in the eastern tropical
Pacific (see anomaly map for the 5 days ending 23 March). A reversal of the trade winds (i.e. winds becoming westerly in the equatorial region) in the
western Pacific has extended east to the Date Line; this is the first time this has occurred since the 2009–10 El Niño.

Is there lightning over the ocean? Cloud to ocean lightning...I'm thinking rare. Lightning within the hurricane/cyclone...I'm thinking yes. In
fact I'm thinking that's one of the ways that researchers tell whether or not a hurricane/cyclone will weaken or intensify.

Are there tropical storms in this area? There are a number of sites that have warning systems for island dwellers and for marine traffic so I think
there are.

Does warm air rise? Yes. One out of three. Nothing in the media stories or anywhere else shows that this is a natural phenom. Nothing shows it has
always been here. Nothing shows that there is understanding of how this happened. I would venture that surface and underwater nuclear testing in
this area might have contributed to a dead ocean. That, however, would not be considered a natural process.

So, do air parcels cross the Pacific on their way west? Trade wind anomalies say no.

Actually, the El Nino tradewind reversals started
just this past January. The reversals are transient, coming and going over some areas for a matter of days or weeks for few months as part of ENSO
(except particularly strong events when it can last over a longer period of time). For the majority of the time the easterlies cross the entire
tropical Pacific . You can find the wind indices for the region here: www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov...
Of main interest is the "Original Data" table. Note that a negative value indicates an average monthly reversal, not that the trades were blowing west
the whole time. You can see that for the vast majority of the time, the easterlies (indicated by positive values) prevail.
Here's a really cool thing, showing pretty much real time global wind patterns. As I'm looking at it I can see a limited area of reversal in the
region but the overall flow is easterly and the westerlies are actually fed by the easterlies to the north. There is no flow from any major nearby
landmass. earth.nullschool.net...

In fact I'm thinking that's one of the ways that researchers tell whether or not a hurricane/cyclone will weaken or intensify.

Actually no, they rely mostly on sea surface temperatures and winds aloft to make those predictions.

Lightning over the ocean is indeed much less prevalent than over land masses.

"Oceanic areas also experience [a dearth of lightning]," Christian says. "People living on some of the islands in the Pacific don't describe much
lightning in their language." The ocean surface doesn't warm up as much as land does during the day because of water's higher heat capacity. Heating
of low-lying air is crucial for storm formation, so the oceans don't experience as many thunderstorms.

Of course there are. That does not mean they are frequent or that lightning is. The above link
has a chart showing the global distribution of lightning. It's sparse in equatorial oceans, including in the region of the hyroxyl hole.

Nothing shows it has always been here. Nothing shows that there is understanding of how this happened.

There is no reason to think it
has not always occurred. It's simply the first time there has been such data for the region.

There is plenty that shows that there is an understanding of how and why it occurs.

Look at the chart. At 52,500 to 59,000 feet, water vapor levels rose from 1980; fell in 1985; rose steadily through 2002 - 2003; fell through 2005
but never back to 1980 levels; rose again after 2005. The red line. Some of the other colors in even higher parts show much more of an increase.

30% of the increase is attributed to methane chemistry in the stratosphere. Efforts to link some of the rest of the increase to colder tropical
tropopause temperatures have so far proven elusive.

Then why, with all those jets flying over Colorado, doesn't water vapor just stay there and accumulate? Since it lasts "several months, several
decades, millenia" and the stratosphere is "static?"

We discussed this already. The stratosphere is static as far as weather goes. It is not static to physics and chemistry and Rossby waves. A
previous link I put up explained the stratosphere/mesosphere water vapor interaction pretty clearly. You, yourself, I think, previously mentioned the
lightning link. All that's left is sunlight. (Except for global warming/climate change.)

Overall, the distribution of stratospheric water vapour is determined by the interaction of radiation, chemistry, and dynamics. Considering the
sources, water vapour enters the stratosphere through vertical transport in the (tropical) tropopause region and is photochemically produced in the
upper stratosphere through the oxidation of methane. The only sink of water vapour in the upper atmosphere is through photolysis by Lyman-a with its
efficiency increasing with altitude in the mesosphere.

Photolysis of water vapor and carbon dioxide produce hydroxyl and atomic oxygen, respectively, that, in turn, produce oxygen in small
concentrations. This process produced oxygen for the early atmosphere before photosynthesis became dominant.

Oxygen increased in stages, first through photolysis (Figure 1) of water vapor and carbon dioxide by ultraviolet energy and, possibly,
lightning

once sufficient oxygen had accumulated in the stratosphere, it was acted on by sunlight to form ozone

And what does air traffic have to do with the hydroxl hole in the tropical west Pacific anyway?

Don't flights go through there? Or is this hole a no-fly zone? Isn't this the area where the ice crystal problems happen?

There can't be an elevator to the stratosphere if the tropopause is anomalously cold. And an elevator could use one of those tropical storms with an
anvil cloud.

For sure it's worth mentioning...worth far more than just a mention. I don't have enough information to adequately dialogue with you on these
issues. I don't know enough to have formed a clear path here. I think that lightning in some ways is key. Kind of like the cloud seeding where the
question is always whether or not inducing rain in one place is then denying rain in another. Same for lightning - does inducing it in one place,
deny it to another? Does artificial lightning release charge that would have been better left to build up and elsewhere release? Because of its'
role in the chemistry of ozone and OH...it seems like it. Because the tropical air masses at the height of the tropics seem to play a key role in
ozone levels at the poles, it seems like it. If we mitigate tropical storms, is this the result? These are some of my questions.

I think that direct emissions into the stratosphere are bad. I don't know if it's a system where once you start, you can't stop because the
atmosphere compensates and initiates a different cycle to deal with the extra stuff. To me it seems almost so if you look at this
graph. The levels steadily go up but
there are downs, some of them marked. This newly discovered hole in the atmosphere doesn't seem natural to me but it's difficult to pin down
because so much of our environment, today, is climate change/global warming which creates anomalies which means that we have to be open to learning
new patterns, imo.

That image is at 8 kilometers/26,000 feet, looking down over mid-latitudes.

No.
8 km is the resolution of the imagery not the altitude. Optical imagery (IR which is what WV imagery is, visible) cannot select an altitude. Your link
about the "dry slots" recommending looking at water vapor imagery. That's why I posted the link.

Stratospheric water vapor levels are rising.

That's interesting. Let's look more closely at that chart. The altitude we're most likely
to be concerned with is 16-18 km even though that's quite a bit higher than most jets fly. But even using that altitude, as has been pointed out,
there has been a slight overall rise since 1980. But there is that troublesome drop from 2001 to 2005. It did increase a bit between 2005 and 2007 but
again shows a decline after that (which you didn't mention). The next level, 18-20 km, shows a similar pattern. If jets are dumping humungous amounts
of water vapor into the stratosphere (enough to have some detrimental effect), why the decreases? Why the big drop after 2000? Why the drop after
2007? Why were water vapor levels lower in 2010 than they were in 2000?

A previous link I put up explained the stratosphere/mesosphere water vapor interaction pretty clearly.

Yes, it did. What does what
happens in the stratopause (at an altitude of around 165,000 feet) have to do with what happens at the bottom of the stratosphere?

You, yourself, I think, previously mentioned the lightning link. All that's left is sunlight.

What effect does lightning have on water
vapor levels? What effect does sunlight have on water vapor levels?

I'm still not seeing why, if jets are dumping humungous amounts of water vapor into the lower stratosphere, water vapor levels have not been steadily
rising since (as you claim) water vapor resides for "several months, several decades, millenia." Still not seeing cause and effect in regard to water
vapor from aircraft. Your own link says that water vapor is generated in the upper stratosphere by methane oxidation and only goes through photolysis
in the mesosphere.

The only sink of water vapour in the upper atmosphere is through photolysis by Lyman-a with its efficiency increasing with altitude in the
mesosphere.

Don't flights go through there? Or is this hole a no-fly zone? Isn't this the area where the ice crystal problems happen?

Yes, they
do. But the hole is in the lower atmosphere, the troposphere. Aren't you complaining about the effects of jets on the stratosphere, above the
tropopause? Also, as pointed out, jet emissions are pretty much O3 neutral. I don't know how you come to the conclusion that jets may have something
to do with the hydroxl hole in the tropical west Pacific.

There can't be an elevator to the stratosphere if the tropopause is anomalously cold. And an elevator could use one of those tropical storms with an
anvil cloud.

Are you saying the tropopause is anomalously cold in the tropical west Pacific? Do you have some data on that?

The site you put up is nice looking, however, I
don't see reversals in the area under discussion...perhaps a lag in data input?

The table is interesting because it seems like reversals are actually slowing down and
almost getting ready to come to a grinding halt - starts right around 2002 - 2003. Values for the reversals seem to also become less from that time
on.

Using in storm lightning to predict intensity is actually a real thing:

In comparing lightning activity with hurricane wind speed, the researchers found a correlation between the two. The surprise, Yair said, was that
lightning activity often peaked hours before winds reached their strongest point.

A sudden surge in lightning activity along with wild fluctuations in a storm’s electric field may help predict tornado formation a local
researcher has found.

...in the above article researchers "During the storm's lightning peak, JHU/APL sensors measured total lightning strikes exceeding 1,000 per
minute." and that brings us to the ongoing DARPA lightning experiments using the U.S. as a laboratory for same and to how this might skew long term
densities of lightning on global renderings. (Unless you believe that all that equipment and researchers in the above article just happened to be
wandering there when the storm hit.)

In this image of one day density average you can clearly see that there is plenty of lightning
within the area of the newly discovered hole in the atmosphere. In fact, just from a visual perspective, there seems to be far more lightning here
than in the Atlantic with the exception of the Florida anomaly. This is from WWLLN (World Wide Lightning Location Network.)

Tropical storms, at a cursory glance, also appear prevalent. I'm seeing that, unlike the Atlantic where the storms come off of Africa and cross the
ocean to the Americas, these storms form in the south west Pacific itself. And with westerly trade wind anomalies would continue right on through
this hole. West Pacific Basin product shows formation there now.

This year and 2012 saw very severe storms in the Solomon Islands which are in this general area. I'm just not getting a sense of rare and uncommon
for lightning and tropical storms in the newhole area. I'm also not getting a sense of crossing the Pacific from the Americas trumping local
action.

To sum, there is every reason to suspect that this hole has not been there always. And there is little to substantiate a natural causes explanation.
There are specific reasons to suspect nuclear pulverization and the usual suspects jet emissions i.e. water vapor & carbon dioxide and pollution from
Asia.

We were talking about "an elevator to the stratosphere" i.e. the Pacific newhole.

Which is in the troposphere, from the surface to the
tropopause. To refresh your memory, this is what I asked about you comment regarding the tropical west Pacific "hole" and nuclear testing:

Can you provide the mechanism whereby atmospheric nuclear testing would create a dearth of hydroxl which would persist for 55 years?

You have not provided such a mechanism.

Really? I thought atmospheric testing was all about communicating radiation along magnetic field lines to conjugate points.

You thought
wrong. It was about developing nuclear weapons, as was underground testing. Oh, with the exception of Plowshare, a really stupid idea cooked up by
Edward Teller, but it had nothing to do with communications either.

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